"Stern's version of what has been going on behind closed doors has of course been disputed, but his efforts were typical of a commissioner who has always seemed eager to be viewed as some kind of modern plantation overseer, treating NBA men as if they were his boys. It's part of Stern's M.O., like his past self-serving edicts on dress code and the questioning of officials. His moves were intended to do little more than show how he's the one keeping the hired hands in their place.

I don't need to be patient, they're going to be shit forever. - CDT, discussing my favorite NFL team

That said, while I agree w/ everything Deadspin wrote on the whole of the subject I still have major issues w/ Gumble.

1) Gumble spent 15 seconds at the end of a show spitting about a major conceptual issue

2) Gumble has long been considered a "uncle tom" by the black community.

This, to me, looks like Gumble seeing and opening for a quick PR bite and a chance to repair his image w/ the black community. So instead of actually touching on the issue the way Deadspin did he chose to just throw some shit out there that would make Whitlock happy and look like a hard core bad ass.

It's shilling for popularity by using a sensitive and important topic. Shit.

As much as Simmon's has been shoveling shit instead of articles, I think that was a really unfair characterization of him. I have never sensed racism from Simmons, latent or otherwise.

Simmons hinges his evidence about the incompetence of the players by citing the amount of formal college education of Piece, Bryant and Garnett. In other words, people are losing jobs and fans are losing games because the NBA is at the mercy of its stupid/uneducated black players.

You know who you don't have negotiate massive deals? People with little formal education. I have a degree in sales, and I wouldn't want to be the one to try and do some negotiating with Stern. He would eat me for lunch, even if I was the one in the right. Playing hoops doesn't prepare you for negotiating. College (especially business school) does better, to at least some degree, but these player's don't even negotiate their own contracts. Their agents and lawyers do. It was like bringing a brain surgeon in to look at your blown transmission. Not his specialty.

It doesn't have to be racism to call a really dumb move a dumb move.

Unusually Simmons offer some blame for the owners. As the intelligence once, they have an obligation to fix the situation. Although they have the intelligence they allow the players, who lack intelligence, to have input in the situation. To Simmons, this is the source of the NBA’s problem.

Who should know how to negotiate a deal, run a team, and run a league better? Guys who run multi-million dollar businesses or guys worth millions of dollars because they are entertaining? I'm sure there are several players in the league who are smarter than I am overall. I'm sure most definitely know more about bball than I do. But the player's side does have limited intellectual capital in this instance. However smart they may be at bball or basketweaving or astrophysics, when it comes to making a big-time business deal, they don't have the same amount of experience and knowhow (call it intellectual capital) that Stern and the owners have on their side.

Maybe I'm wrong, and Simmon's really is racist or at least saying very racist things, but given what I've read/heard from him over the years, I have trouble seeing that.

And I don't give a shit how smart their economist is. If he is that good, send him out to make a point, not Rapey, Douchey and Wheels.

Plantation is the key word. Plantations date back to the latifundia of the Roman Empire and continue to exist today, and they have only relied on slave labor for a small proportion of their existence.

Yes, because the Romans never used slaves or indentured servants. Just because they were white or North African slaves doesn't make them less slaves. And just because they were slaves 2000 years ago instead of 200 years ago doesn't make the slavery any less wrong.

So you too can't see the fact that these players also run multi-million dollar corporations and have as much (if not more, it's been argued fairly successfully that the players have the far more intelligent planning/support team) brain power behind everyone?

No, he called a bunch of black athletes lacking in intellectual capacity.

That's as bad as it gets.

The first part, the angry black man part, I can see some reaching there. In the same regard, no one comes out and mentions it w/out the second part.

As I said, what Gumble said makes a lot of sense if he meant it in that way. He still took national shit for three days. Simmons gets a free pass.

Nope, never swore this place off, although if this thread were in NHB where it should be I wouldn't be in the Cavs board, because trying to read the idiots in here re: the lockout raises my blood pressure.

And Swerb, I don't know how you can fairly say they are in over their heads. The only thing the owners have is a shit ton more money and a shit ton more time. That alone puts Hunter and the Union in a losing negotiation.

The Union could be a bunch of MENSA badasses and they still would have the odds stacked against them here. Talent, smart, etc has nothing to do w/ it.

e0y2e3 wrote:Nope, never swore this place off, although if this thread were in NHB where it should be I wouldn't be in the Cavs board, because trying to read the idiots in here re: the lockout raises my blood pressure.

And Swerb, I don't know how you can fairly say they are in over their heads. The only thing the owners have is a shit ton more money and a shit ton more time. That alone puts Hunter and the Union in a losing negotiation.

The Union could be a bunch of MENSA badasses and they still would have the odds stacked against them here. Talent, smart, etc has nothing to do w/ it.

I think you're right eoy, and I think Simmons missed that. There really isn't anyone that the players can send up there in these negotiations. The owners are holding the cards here.

Here's something I wonder. Wuld Simmons have written the same thing if it was Nash and Dirk there instead of Garnett et al?

e0y2e3 wrote:So you too can't see the fact that these players also run multi-million dollar corporations and have as much (if not more, it's been argued fairly successfully that the players have the far more intelligent planning/support team) brain power behind everyone?

No, he called a bunch of black athletes lacking in intellectual capacity.

He said they lacked intellectual capital, not capacity. Maybe he meant them as the same thing. If I thought he did, I would be first in line to condemn him. But intellectual capital is a real thing, it is a defined concept. Simmons may have played a little loose with the definition, but I can see what I think he was saying with it.

If the players had a better planning team, they wouldn't have trotted out three of the least liked players in the Assoc. to sit down at the table. It reeks of a gimmick. They tried to get cute and got their ass burned.

Some of the players run multimillion dollar corps, sure. But when it comes to the nitty gritty of running a business, the 29 guys + Stern have way more experience than three players with little formal education, let alone business education.

e0y2e3 wrote:And again, the guy setting up the Union's economic negotiations and conecssions is often called the smartest man alive.

By the Freakonomics guys, maybe. He may be a brilliant economist, but that doesn't defend sending Pierce, Bryant, and Garnett to sit down at the table.

Jason Whitlock wrote an article stating that the players sre not on the same level as Stern and his team.

David Stern isn’t moonlighting. This is his day job. He has a bunch of kids with sycophant publicists and groupies trying to negotiate a multibillion-dollar labor agreement. Rather than point a finger, Stern needs to slap the taste out of the mouth of the next NBA player who enters a serious meeting, let alone starts shouting about anything.

It’s embarrassing how silly these players are acting. They’ve never heard the concept/cliche that a defendant who represents himself has a fool for a client?

Do you know what a basketball player is with a $100 million contract? A basketball player. He’s not a lawyer. He’s not a negotiator.

Should he feel the same wrath as Gumbel and Simmons

Galley Boys are slop on top of a so-so burger and a bun you coulde get from a Covneninet food mart generic pack. They the Antoine Joubert of burgers; soft, sloppy, oozing grease and cheap sauce and extremely overrated by a biased fan base. Proof that if you throw enough cheap sauce shit on a burger you still can't overcome the lame burger. -JB

That is intellectual capital. The players roll in all of this is to vote and sit down. Trotting them out there 100% was a gimmick and I have no problem w/ calling it that (although Kobe, by all accounts is extremely intelligent).

When he directly assaulted guys that have the same impact in the whole thing as that cocksucker Dan Gilbert telling Hunter "if you cave on BRI, we'll give you the system even though we won't promise that, TRUST ME" or Paul Allen coming in like the terminator.

Peter Holt told the players they hadn't felt enough pain yesterday, which is every bit as bad if not worse than KG's encounter.

End of the day whatever these idiots (and the owners are playing like little kids right now and not acting like highly educated anything) have to say it doesn't change the bottom line and the numbers and we still have people meeting.

I can see no way Simmons can justify capital versus capacity. None at all.

That is intellectual capital. The players roll in all of this is to vote and sit down. Trotting them out there 100% was a gimmick and I have no problem w/ calling it that (although Kobe, by all accounts is extremely intelligent).

I can only assume (and hope) that Simmons meant the intellectual capital of the players themselves against the owners, not the NBA vs. Union.

I will agree with you that the Union has some very nice players (PUN!), but they don't have the coach to put it together. You can have the world's smartest man, but if your plan is to have him pound the rock and hope he creates something, you aren't gonna win big.

e0y2e3 wrote:When he directly assaulted guys that have the same impact in the whole thing as that cocksucker Dan Gilbert telling Hunter "if you cave on BRI, we'll give you the system even though we won't promise that, TRUST ME" or Paul Allen coming in like the terminator.

Peter Holt told the players they hadn't felt enough pain yesterday, which is every bit as bad if not worse than KG's encounter.

End of the day whatever these idiots (and the owners are playing like little kids right now and not acting like highly educated anything) have to say it doesn't change the bottom line and the numbers and we still have people meeting.

To say the owners have been acting like little kids is an understatement. They are making the players and fans suffer because the owners keep ok'ing Brendon Haywood for $55million-type deals. Its shitty.

e0y2e3 wrote:So either he was talking just to talk or he 100% meant capacity.

Given how Simmons has been lately, talking just to hear his own voice is a distinct possibility.

I agree- they have clearly defined goals and objectives as well as pretty much all the leverage. They'd be idiots to not come away with exactly what it is they want and I say that without regard to whatever it is they want.

I don't know enough about it to deplore them for ruining lives or humbling the players. I honestly don't care about that.

But I think what real and pure hoops fans have to put above anything and everything else is the first paragraph. The players have no leverage. None. And they will and were always going to get crushed in this if the owners could stay somewhat united.

All the hand-wringing and vitriol directed at any owner(s) simply makes no sense to me when you consider that this was always their goal.

They're going to reach it too. Wait until the checks aren't coming in. It's going to get worse when the rank and file start coming apart at the seams.

Look, I watch because it's convenient and it's competitive and it's sports. The hard core guys like Lee watch out of love. The owners have both subsets under control. I'll watch again when it's back and so will the hard core guys. No one's going away over this.

I saw Demetri lament the Cavs fans are missing Kyrie Irving while Gilbert retroactively tries to stick it to LBJ. They're not. They just aren't in the give-a-shit mode for the most part. Nobody here other than a rabid subset gives a fuck right now. No more so than people pack the Jake to come see Carlos Santana develop.

Just the way it is here right now. More people are okay with what they perceive to be the prima donnas getting a comeuppance than missing Kyrie Irving. Whether that actually happens or is just vengefully wishful thinking? Probably more of the latter. Nothing will change other than the flow of cash into the owner's accounts. Stars will still not come here and ones that are drafted here will leave.

So let's watch them bleed some of their own blood for a while.

That's the other side to e0y2e3 being crushed because the sport he loves is fucking itself over. And it sucks for guys like him and Demetri who truly love the game.

But the majority of us are amused by the situation and more interested in getting some vague pound of flesh.

And on OJ's point, it wasn't negotiating at all. The owners haven't negotiated. It was telling the players fuck you, after trotting a mediator in to have a nice PR win w/ the general public.

It's all a dog and pony show for all the reasons I and now Peeks have mentioned.

My only point is Simmons ranting about KG going off on Stern, well when are we going to get the article about the owners behavior yesterday? It was deplorable, childish and nothing more than a big "fuck you, we'll win so we don't care."

This is where the capital v. capacity thing comes in for me. He's fine giving the owners a free pass to act like toddlers just because they can but he's not okay w/ Kobe Bryant sitting in a meeting because he didn't go to college? Awesome.

Last edited by e0y2e3 on Fri Oct 21, 2011 2:47 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know enough about it to deplore them for ruining lives or humbling the players. I honestly don't care about that.

...

Look, I watch because it's convenient and it's competitive and it's sports. The hard core guys like Lee watch out of love. The owners have both subsets under control. I'll watch again when it's back and so will the hard core guys. No one's going away over this.

I saw Demetri lament the Cavs fans are missing Kyrie Irving while Gilbert retroactively tries to stick it to LBJ. They're not. They just aren't in the give-a-shit mode for the most part. Nobody here other than a rabid subset gives a fuck right now. No more so than people pack the Jake to come see Carlos Santana develop.

Just the way it is here right now. More people are okay with what they perceive to be the prima donnas getting a comeuppance than missing Kyrie Irving. Whether that actually happens or is just vengefully wishful thinking? Probably more of the latter. Nothing will change other than the flow of cash into the owner's accounts. Stars will still not come here and ones that are drafted here will leave.

So let's watch them bleed some of their own blood for a while.

That's the other side to e0y2e3 being crushed because the sport he loves is fucking itself over. And it sucks for guys like him and Demetri who truly love the game.

But the majority of us are amused by the situation and more interested in getting some vague pound of flesh.

YMMV

Pretty much covers my thoughts, as Lee can atest I know just enough to make a fool of myself when discussing it authoritatively. Yet stripped to bare negotiating it makes no sense to not make the players bleed when they have no real leverage.

"When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience."

e0y2e3 wrote:And on OJ's point, it wasn't negotiating at all. The owners haven't negotiated. It was telling the players fuck you, after trotting a mediator in to have a nice PR win w/ the general public.

Looks like one side that has all the leverage negotiating with a side that has very little. The final compromise (which is what I think you equate with negotiating) will be fully tilted to the owners.

On the intellectual blah blah we agree. How many doomsday scenarios has Stern spun? "Trust me," is something you say to your wife when she has caught you cheating in the past. Neither side has ownership of rightousness.

My opinion has changed as this has gone on, no system will make the NBA a utopia. At that point I stopped really even giving it my normal crap effort in regards to details. The owners will finagle some way to keep paying guys too much, and star players will still leave for deals in posh cities. I, once a hard cap guy, finally applied Republican economic principals, and realized it will just make the agents and deals more complicated. Look how the NHL had to veto front loaded and otherwise complicated deals.

While I still desire a system that limits player movement from my naive home fan perspective, I know I'm fooling myself to think it will happen for any long period of time.

Oh, and I'll be applying to any and all accounting, security, and surveillance positions at the Casino. Love ya Dan!

"When a man with money meets a man with experience, the man with experience leaves with money and the man with money leaves with experience."

I'm not going to bother discussing the lockout w/ people that don't follow it closely, but that isn't negotiating.

The owners are so backwards yesterday Silver sat down at the podium and said moving 2% was a billion dollars (after it was pointed out they lose some absurd like $200MM a week or some shit for cancelling games) over a 10 year deal so he wouldn't do it, five seconds later Holt declared that moving 2% for the players was no big deal.

There is no plan for the owners, nothing more than protecting their PR image. The rest is just sitting around bleeding and waiting for the cut they left in the Union to bleed them out first.

This is anything but a negotiation and to even use that term suggests you have never been in a mediation or anything of the like.

e0y2e3 wrote:My only point is Simmons ranting about KG going off on Stern, well when are we going to get the article about the owners behavior yesterday? It was deplorable, childish and nothing more than a big "fuck you, we'll win so we don't care."

I think that's out there to a degree. I've read it. You've read it and said it. I think people know. I just honestly don't think they care and that they clearly side with the 'pound of flesh' side. Many people are also ignorant enough to believe the owners crushing the players will somehow benefit them and keep them flush with stars.

They are fools.

And the media manipulates stories more than objectively reports on them.

I can't defend Simmons and I wouldn't if I could because I think he's become an arrogant caricature of what he once was. He was a guy that encapsulated what fans thought and he's now as Bourgeois as many of the effing owners themselves. He can rot and die.

Even more of a joke is Simmons thinking or perpetuating the myth that if Kobe, Pierce and Garnett were fucking Harvard grads with law and economics degrees that it would make a bit of difference. This isn't about intelligence or framing an argument or about equitable economic splits. It's solely about strapping the players to a table and starting the huge saw.

And when the owners get exactly what they want they'll try and play nice and talk about the players being partners and the long term health of the game being taken care of when none of it ever mattered one bit.

This is a stone-cold cash jack and the owners are using lead pipes and chains.

*Hmm... this is how Weekend Wrap material is born. There's a page right there

Orenthal wrote:Perhaps your right, maybe the owners are more or less treating the players like childern. No need to take it to a more race based level.

Oh, and I worked for a small business I know what its like to negotiate/accept/bend over when you have little power. Call it what you will, I think the parent/child analogy works well enough.

Fuck, you can use big corporation/employee analogies all day too.

I chose my career path but I have zero control over it once the work is put in. My salary is dictated to me and there's no negotiating over it in the last 3-5 years. That's fucking life.

A lot of the people above and beyond the guy I report to and the next layer or so are a-holes. They are rigid and uncaring and if someone else was in my office tomorrow they wouldn't give a shit at all if the business was profitable.

Again, there's nothing earth shattering going here at all. It's just public. People act like little girls and bitches every day everywhere in the business world. It ain't right and it ain't fair and it ain't changing as long as making fucking money is the object.

e0y2e3 wrote:I think my favorite part of Simmons calling the players too stupid to negotiate w/ the big bad owners is that he did so in a column where HE PRETENDED TO KNOW HOW TO FIX THE ENTIRE LOCKOUT.

If the players are not qualified, w/ all of the coaching and "intellectual capital" they have guiding them, how in the fuck is Bill Simmons qualified?

I'd really like to see Simmons try and explain why he has a better grasp on the lockout issues than Fisher. I really fucking would.

By the way, none of you read my links and many of you dick ride Simmons, but should you feel compelled this is a perfect deconstruction and burning of his shit NBA saving plan and the lies all of you believe because he said them. Most of you would prefer being sheep, but here: http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2011/10/20/ ... mmons-hook

And btw, I read most of your links and we've pretty much been in lock-step on Simmons throughout his career. His early stuff and his Vegas stuff was otherworldly good. Then his ego eclipsed his ability at some point, everything but his hoops talk blew and then even that became insufferable.

Now he's a joke and a symbol of all that he despised when he was coming up.

e0y2e3 wrote:By the way, none of you read my links and many of you dick ride Simmons, but should you feel compelled this is a perfect deconstruction and burning of his shit NBA saving plan and the lies all of you believe because he said them. Most of you would prefer being sheep, but here: http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2011/10/20/ ... mmons-hook

I've read all your links in this thread I believe, and that was a great article.

e0y2e3 wrote:If the players are not qualified, w/ all of the coaching and "intellectual capital" they have guiding them, how in the fuck is Bill Simmons qualified?

Because he has become an ego-maniacal ass. The only thing I've gotten through with Simmons in the last few months was his pod with Blake Griffin, and that's only because I like Blake.

e0y2e3 wrote:in terms of the coach to put it together thing, I don't get it...

Sending the players in was a gimmick and a stupid gamble. It reeked of "our team is full of nerds and fat kids, so we will run 'The Annexation of Puerto Rico.'" Sure, Kobe seems like a smart guy, but I don't get that from PP and KG. Why not bring in smarter (or more more level headed) players? If it is as you say, that they have a lot of great personnel on their side (and I'm not doubting you on this), why pull some stupid stunt like they did unless they don't have a solid gameplan?

e0y2e3 wrote:By the way, none of you read my links and many of you dick ride Simmons, but should you feel compelled this is a perfect deconstruction and burning of his shit NBA saving plan and the lies all of you believe because he said them. Most of you would prefer being sheep, but here: http://www.sbnation.com/nba/2011/10/20/ ... mmons-hook

"Silver is the lead negotiator for the NBA in the lockout. But maybe it would be more obvious if he carried a scepter around."